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How one parable transformed my life.
I’ve been my own boss for a while now—writing books and magazine pieces and writing here, too—and last week someone asked me how I found the courage to write for a living.
“I didn’t always have it,” I said.
Not at all. I was once scared out of my mind to try to write for a living. I got panic attacks just thinking about. I never thought I could pull it off. I delayed the life I enjoy now for years. Until I read one story, one parable really.
It helped me see how the career I wanted might actually be possible.
That parable? “Acres of Diamonds.”
It opens maybe 500 years ago with a wealthy Persian farmer named Ali Hafed. He’s visited one day by Buddhist priests. (This sounds like the set up for a joke but swear it’s not.) The priests tell Hafed about diamonds and how much they’re worth. If Hafed had a single diamond the size of his thumb he could purchase the county in which he lived. If he had a mine of diamonds, the farmer could buy a mighty kingdom for himself and his descendants.
The wealthy farmer Hafed had never heard of these diamonds. “Where do I find them?” he asked.
“If you will find a river that runs through white sands, between high mountains,” one of the…
